So after all that trouble to have a contest and sort through the entries and counting the votes. The winner is...

Donna

The voting was very close. Within one vote, actually. But we checked for hanging chads, double-checked with the Supreme Court and the results are certified.

Alrighty, folks here are your final five.

1) Dawn Dunn

...read the rest...

When I started blogging on Fiddley Gomme, I was writing about all kinds of things I figured would piss my wife off. So I wanted to make sure she didn't accidentally stumble across the site. Because I'm a chicken-shit.

To keep my anonymity, I invented an alias. Pete Dunn. I also came up with one in order to keep hers. Donna Dunn. This worked out great. I wrote about whatever I wanted and she was none-the-wiser.

Somewhere along the way, I felt like we had gotten to a place where I could share my thoughts and feelings with her without fear of castration. So I shared this blog with her. And except for a few minor bumps, it's gone very well.

I have a stupid habit of naming inanimate objects. My first car, a powder blue, vinyl-topped 1978 Pontiac Bonneville was dubbed The Blue Whale. After that, I drove The Cherry Tomato. These are the first in a line of cars that included The Hulk, Black Beauty, Snow White, Goldilocks, Goldilocks 2, Goldilocks 3 and Babe, The Blue Ox.

Now that I think about it, what I have is a dumb habit of naming my car based on what color it is. None of these is a proper name for a thing. First of all, things should only be given a name if they are sleek, or beautiful, or powerful. Things like race cars, airplanes and naval vessels. Not 1985 Honda Civic sedans.

Also, I should probably not ask my kids for their advice when naming the three gold minivans in a row we've owned.

For a few hours each day, Donna works as an underpaid government employee in a classroom at a local elementary school. It's a tough and thankless job but she finds working directly with students to be particularly rewarding.

Yesterday, after the class sang the National Anthem, as the do each morning, one young boy approached Donna and said, "Wow, you could totally sing that at a football game."

That's just about the grandest compliment a nine-year-old boy can pay a person, I think. Yes, high praise indeed.

When Donna was growing up, her parent always lovingly teased that she was their "big girl". I don't mean when she was like five in a gee-now-you're-in-kindergarten-please-stop-sucking-your-thumb sort of way. At five feet, seven inches, Donna is nearly as tall as her dad. So even into high school, she was their "big girl".

While she's never been anything even close to obese, and while she's never considered herself fat, I think it's a safe bet that she also never thought of herself as skinny. In fact, I think that while she's always been aware of her weight and shape, she's never really had either a positive or negative body image at all.

She's certainly been aware of her weight and size and shape but it's never seemed like it was really a part of who she is... a part of her identity.

"How's that rum smoothy treating you?"

"It made me a little dizzy."

"The word you're looking for is tipsy."

I've had a hard time catching up on my sleep lately. After a couple days on the road and a weekend full of shows and rehearsal I was finally able to sleep in on Sunday morning.

Usually sleep-in mornings are interrupted by the kids or the dog or the insane urge to empty my fifty-nine gallon bladder. But this Sunday I was able to sleep soundly well into the ten o'clock hour. Which was followed by me not showering and instead watching television in my underwear until about one o'clock.

So far so good.

So I had this ambitious idea that I would kick ass on this whole NaBloPoMo thing. That ambition got me exactly two days in before a Saturday full of rehearsal, a show, and a beer-and-karaoke-filled birthday party for Sarah distracted me. So, unless you count drunken Twitters and iBlog entries, I am a total failure at the daily posting thing. Just add that to the pile of things I'm a total failure at.

On the upside, Donna and I are keeping up on our other once-a-day-every-day-of-November commitment. We call it NaFuEvDaMo.

I assure you, I will try very hard to keep it up.

To kick off NaBloPoMo this year, I'm introducing a new blogger and NaBloPoMo participant. Many of you have been begging to hear more from her so here's your chance. Donna is in the house, people.

She assures me she'll be much nicer than I am. Something about no one liking an asshole. Whatever that's supposed to mean.

Donna is an unbelievably talented crafter. I'm not talking about lame-ass tole painting and plastic grapes either. She's a master with a pneumatic stapler and an industrial sewing machine. If you want to get serious about rebuilding your grandmother's old chair or repainting your dining room, pay close attention.